“XCOM” has never pulled its punches. The series has continually pitted hapless humans against a blitzkrieg of technologically superior alien invaders. In fact, so many players failed to save Earth during their playthroughs of 2012’s “XCOM: Enemy Unknown” that Firaxis was inspired to dream up a dark future where the aliens actually won.

Visually, Bound leaves nothing to be desired. A humanoid princess pirouettes her way through an ever-shifting geometric landscape, whirling and twirling her way past brightly colored triangles and pyramids, all while twinkling orchestral music warbles in the background.

In its finest moments, “No Man’s Sky” is a sublime exploration of the infinitude of space, the beauty and variation of nature, and a quiet contemplation on loneliness. That ambitious vision is accomplished through one of the most sophisticated approaches to procedural content generation I’ve ever seen, in which entire ecosystems spring up across any one of millions of potential planets.

So, building off last week’s discussion, let’s talk about what makes a classic RPG a classic — in other words, so good that dozens upon dozens of games come out each year trying to recapture that old magic.

In “Madden 17,” a specific line stands out from the excellent new commentary team of Charles Davis and Brandon Gaudin. Davis, the ex-player providing the color commentary, talks about how coaches are always looking for that “perfect game.”

It’s easy to find games that want to hearken back to the golden age of JRPGs, when all battles were turn-based and everyone was an 8-bit sprite.

Building a world can be a challenging task. It requires answering questions, many of which will have been unforeseen prior to writing. What condition is your fiction’s world in? How does the character relate to it? What sets it apart from similar stories or genres?

You can always pick out the “artsy” games in an instant: minimalist, wordless adventures with barely clarified controls, plots and menus.

“Song of the Deep” can’t seem to get out of its own way. While the small-scale project from Insomniac — and debut of GameStop’s new publishing wing, GameTrust — has glimmers of greatness, it constantly feels just slightly off in ways that could have been easily adjusted for a more pleasant experience.

Rather than donning a shirt with a big Pikachu and Pokemon logo, for instance, I much prefer subtler prints, like a shirt I once got off Kickstarter emblazoned with “Pallet Town University, Established 1996.” If you know it, you know it. If you don’t, then it just looks like an obscure school shirt.